The beheading of Saints Faith, Hope, Charity and Wisdom

Ex Libris: the printed image and the art of the book, 2010

Throughout the Middle Ages, Jacobus de Voragine’s Lives of Saints was among the most widely read books in Europe. Better known as The Golden Legend, its popularity lay in that such stories had, until then, only been available in religious texts intended for Church officials. Effectively, de Voragine’s book was one that helped begin a process of literary democracy.

Mingling fact, fable, and ancient lore, each of the book’s one-hundred and seventy-seven chapters told the tale of a saint’s life. De Voragine wrote of the miracles performed by each, of strange encounters with God, while dwelling also on the tortures administered to saints by societies in which anti-Christian sentiment was rife.

Drawn from a fifteenth-century edition of the text, these woodcuts are the earliest examples of printed book illustration within the Gallery’s collection of western art. Diminutive in scale and austere in conception, they represent an art form in its infancy: the first printed illustrations had been made only fifteen years earlier by the German artist, Albrecht Pfister.

Elspeth Pitt, Assistant Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs